Call Center Scheduling Featured Article
Customer Support via Twitter Offers Unique Challenges and Opportunities
Today, the contact center is no longer the place it once was. Largely a telephone center in years past, it’s now the place that’s expected to handle any and all outreach customers make via whatever channel they choose. Social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter (News - Alert) have expanded opportunities for companies when it comes to social marketing, but they have also expanded the challenges to customer support organizations. The days of scheduling agents for eight-hour shifts on the telephone with a few breaks and lunch thrown in may be starting to disappear.
When social media first debuted in contact centers, companies handled it by hiring (usually younger) dedicated workers to keep an eye on these channels. In these times of omnichannel customer engagement, however, this isn’t always possible. Customers expect the same quality transaction across multiple channels, which means sometimes that agent must “follow” the customer.
Twitter is a particularly unique opportunity when it comes to customer support, according to Shep Hyken writing for Fortune. In fact, Twitter itself is encouraging people to use the platform to reach out to the companies they do business with, to leave comments and ask questions. Their interactions become visible to others, which actually helps create a future knowledge base for customers with the same questions.
“Twitter is public, which is a good thing. It’s one-on-one interaction, but with an audience,” he wrote. “If the company responds quickly, then everyone can see an issue being resolved in real time. Sure, the company may need to have some private discussion with the customer – which can be done through Twitter’s Direct Message feature – but once the problem is resolved, the company can come back and publically thank the customer for the opportunity to serve him or her.”
Many social customer support experts today recommend that all companies have a dedicated Twitter handle for customer service (as opposed to one for just the company). There is evidence that those organizations with a dedicated handle get a 10 times better response than companies that don’t. In addition, companies that use Twitter as a social care channel are seeing a 19 percent increase in customer satisfaction.
By doing a great job in handling customer support issues via Twitter, organizations can demonstrate to other customers that they are leading the way when it comes to social customer support, according to Hyken.
“The [Twitter] conversation can become distributed,” he wrote. “Not only can an existing audience of followers witness real-time interaction, but the company can also retweet certain comments, especially accolades, to a larger audience.”
In addition to being easy, visible and convenient to customers, Twitter is also a cost-effective means of providing customer support. The average cost of a Twitter response is $1, versus the average cost of interacting with a customer through the traditional call center, which is $6. While a Twitter customer support campaign will likely mean some worker and schedule changes in your contact center, the money you can save by doing social customer support right will help you rework your organization to be friendlier to customers who choose social media.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi